"A poet, eh! Yes, I remember your rhapsodies about Shelley and Keats at school. So you've followed in their footsteps, Roger. 'The child's the father of the man.' That's the Bible, isn't it?"
"I've got a hazy idea that Wordsworth said something like it," responded Axton, drily. "Yes, I'm a poet. And you?"
"I'm the prose to your poetry. You study nature, I study man."
"Taken Pope's advice, no doubt. A novelist?"
"No; not a paying line nowadays. Overcrowded."
"No, indeed, Fanks! Eh, Fanks," repeated Axton, struck with a sudden idea, and pushing his chair away from that of his companion. "Why, you're a detective down here about that--that suicide."
"What wonderful penetration!" said Octavius, laughing. "How did you hit upon that idea, my friend?"
Roger Axton's hand went up to his fair moustache, which hardly concealed the quivering of his lips, and he laughed in an uneasy manner.
"Circumstantial evidence," he said at last, hurriedly. "The barmaid told me that a London detective called Fangs was down here on account of the--the suicide, and allowing for her misuse of the name, and your unexpected presence here, it struck me--"
"That I must be the man," finished Fanks, shooting a keen glance at the somewhat careworn face of his school friend. "Well, you are perfectly right. I am Octavius Fanks, of Scotland Yard, detective, formerly Octavius Rixton, of nowhere in particular, idler. You don't seem to relish the idea of my being a bloodhound of the law."
"I--I--er--well, I certainly don't see why a detective shouldn't be as respectable as any other man. Still--"
"There's a kind of Dr. Fell dislike towards him," responded Octavius, composedly. "Yes, that's true enough, though intensely ridiculous. People always seem to be afraid of a detective. I don't know why, unless, maybe, it's their guilty conscience."
"Their conscience?" faltered Axton, with an obvious effort.
"I said 'their guilty conscience'" corrected Fanks, with emphasis. "I'll tell you all about it, Roger. But first take your face out of the shadow, and let me have a look at you. I want to see how the boy of seventeen looks as the man of seven-and-twenty."
Reluctantly--very reluctantly, Roger Axton did as he was requested, and when the yellow light shone full on his face, the detective stared steadily at him, with the keen look of one accustomed to read every line, every wrinkle, every light, every shadow on the features of his fellow-men, and skilled to understand the meanings thereof.